From the article:
For 20 years until now, the UK aid budget has risen, and global poverty has fallen. Now, for the first time in two decades, global poverty is rising but development aid, sadly, is falling. We are depriving the world’s most vulnerable of food, medical treatment and schooling, as surely as pulling away the needle from a child awaiting vaccination, whipping away the school meal from her hungry mouth and shutting the school gates on all those whose human right to education we promised to uphold.
It will take decades to undo the damage that is about to be inflicted. More than 5 million young people will be denied the vaccinations for polio, measles and others they require, with the result that, according to a calculation by the Center for Global Development, 100,000 children’s lives that could have been saved will be lost. Four and a half million fewer children a year will receive an education.
“Global Britain” is being launched by telling 27 of the poorest countries in Asia and Africa that, at a stroke, their bilateral aid is being almost halved, and that Britain’s share of national income devoted to overseas development – once one of the highest at 0.7% – will fall to 0.5 %, below that of Saudi Arabia and Turkey.
